DEAR FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES,                         

Welcome to Mongolian Judiciary website!

After a long and hard work my friends and I finally made this web and we are very happy to present it to you. The purpose of this site is to help Mongolian young judges, lawyers and law professionals to understand international human rights, importance of judicial independence. Additionally, this site will present latest news on human rights; and judiciary from Mongolia and worldwide. This is a first site on judiciary that has been created by individual people. These people devoted their valuable time and effort to create this site and I would like to thank all of them for the tireless and hard work they have done. This is an open site and we welcome all comments and suggestions that would help us to improve it.

With best regards,


Gombosuregiin Ganzorig

MONGOLIAN JUDICIARY

Mongolia has a long history so does the judiciary. Chingis, the Greatest Khan in Mongolian history, in the XII century had appointed his closest associate Shihi Hutag as the Chief Officer empowered to decide all type of disputes. Later on Hubilai Khan appointed Muhlui Baijy as the Chief Officer charged with the strict execution of the Great Yasa, which was at that time a kind of unified code.

The modern court in Mongolia is one of the three branches of government. It has simple three level structures, namely, a trial court, an appeal court and a supreme court. There are 39 trials courts (soum and intersoum), 22 appeal courts and one Supreme Court. In total there are 61 courts and 355 judges serving there. Sixty percent of the judges are women. Mongolia is a civil law country, yet its new constitution contains many characters from common law. Courts are guarantees for human rights.

The Supreme Court was created on January 8, 1927. The Court is the highest resort in the judicial system of Mongolia. It resides in the Capital City-Ulaanbaatar. The Court consists of the Chief Judge and 10 judges. This Court has 2 divisions, civil and criminal. Each division has 5 justices, one of them is the Senior Judge. There are two women judges.

The Constitution of Mongolia of 1992 changed the election procedure for judges. Now the President appoints and removes all judges upon the nomination by the General Counsel for Courts. Before the nomination is to sent to the President, the candidates must be presented to the Parliament, however, it does not have the power to endorse or reject the nominee. There is not a fixed term for tenure, and Mongolia does not practice the impeachment procedure for removal of a judge. Therefore, a judge will hold office until their retirement, unless he or she is not removed by the decision of the Judicial Disciplinary Committee. According to the Constitution of Mongolia, a 35-year old Mongolian national with a law degree and not less than 10 years of professional experience may be appointed as judge of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court reviews criminal, civil and administrative cases by a petition of a citizen, private entities and government agencies. Also prosecution can present a motion for the Supreme Court review. Since the Court has no discretionary power, it has to revise all cases and this mandatory review makes the number of caseloads quite big. The Court automatically reviews death sentence cases. The criminal and civil procedural laws allow the Court to consider both fact and application of law. The Court has limited jurisdiction, since all constitutional disputes are under the jurisdiction of the Constitutional Court. One of the significant specifics of the Supreme Court of Mongolia is that it has authority to hear cases as a trial court.

The Secretariat and Research Center for Courts provides every day support for the Supreme Court. The Court has the Library and Computer Lab. The Judicial Training Center for Judges also resides at the Court.